State-of-the-art broadband services still don’t reach many parts of the African continent, especially rural villages. But one consumer technology is pervasive: cell phones.
According to the Cisco VNI Service Adoption Forecast, there will be 1.3 billion consumer mobile devices across the Middle East and Africa by 2016 – a billion of them being basic feature phones, not smartphones. At the same time, mobile video is expected to be the fastest-growing service in the region, with 184 million users projected by 2016.
This past Mother’s Day, I was remembering how my mother used to encourage sharing. Like most parents, I limit my daughters’ intake of sugar. However, whenever my mother came into town, my efforts would go right out the window. She would arrive on our doorstep, with large amounts of candy smuggled in her luggage. Her goal: to spoil the girls. Resistance was futile, but she showed them that giving can be as much fun as receiving and encouraged them to share their contraband.
In today’s connected world, sharing information has never been easier. Not too long ago we had to wait months to finish a roll of film, and then waited days to have it developed. Now, we can send videos and pictures almost instantaneously with our cameras and phones. Not only has this changed our personal lives, but has also allowed us to now work our way to collaborate and streamline business. With services like WebEx or TelePresence, demonstrated in the new film Battleship, experts across the world can communicate and share data as if in the same room. Using this and other collaboration technology like Cisco’s Jabber, anyone can now use their choice of device to access information instantly. Over the next few weeks, a series of Cisco videocasts will show how incorporating, capturing, transforming, and sharing videos for business can be done easily by anyone.
Cisco CEO John Chambers declared “We are now entering the post-macrocell era, where small cells also will play a critical role in delivering the next-generation mobile Internet.”
The internet generation has their own way of working; they are not confined to one space and want flexibility to use different tools; they are more mobile, social, visual, and virtual. They use technology to expand their community of influence across coworkers, suppliers, and customers, breaking down barriers to solve problems across and within these communities.
I have recorded a VoD were I share my thoughts on how Cisco is uniquely positioned to empower the internet generation to transform businesses by expanding the reach of video and making it pervasive. Take a listen and share your thoughts with me.
By Jason Kohn, Contributing Columnist
